by Amy Lamont
Serena marched up to Mandy’s door and knocked without hesitation. She was a woman on a mission. Mandy pulled the door open, a baby on her hip. “Serena! How are you?”
“Good, thanks. Sorry to show up unannounced.” She couldn’t help herself. She made fish faces at the baby and put out her hand for him to grab. “He’s getting so big.”
“Tell me about it.” Mandy hitched little Liam up higher on her hip. She stepped back from the door and motioned Serena inside.
“Am I interrupting anything?” Serena asked.
“Not at all. I don’t have to be at the shop this afternoon. I’m happy for a little adult company,” Mandy confided.
Serena laughed. “So he's cute, but not the best conversationalist, huh?”
“Exactly.” Mandy lead her into the kitchen. “I need to feed him before he realizes he’s hungry or things will not be pretty around here.”
“Oh, can I feed him?”
“Sure. Let me just get his food warmed up. You mind getting him set up in his chair?”
Serena all but lunged forward in her eagerness to hold the baby. She hugged him close a second and placed a kiss on the top of his dark, wispy hair and inhaled his delicious baby scent before settling him in his chair.
She had a special affinity for the little guy. Since she’d moved to Kismet Beach permanently, she made a point of getting to know Mandy. And she loved every minute she got to spend with Liam. For years she’d believed with all her heart that Mandy would be her sister-in-law and the little guy, her nephew.
A sharp pain squeezed her heart. What if that never happened?
She pushed the thought aside and blew a raspberry into the Liam’s cheek.
“Are you hungry, little man? Your mama’s getting you lunch.”
Mandy set a bowl of cereal and some kind of mashed fruit in front of Serena. “So what brings you by this afternoon? Having baby withdrawal?”
Serena smiled. “That, too. But no, there's something else that prompted the visit.”
She turned to face the baby, happy to have something to keep her hands occupied while she explained things to Mandy.
“I came to ask you about Mace.”
“Oh, did you hear he’s back in town?”
Serena flicked her eyes toward Mandy. The tone of her voice was almost too nonchalant. Serena narrowed her eyes as she concentrated on getting more food into Liam’s mouth than on his cheeks, chin and hair. No easy feat when he flailed his soft little hands to try to get the spoon.
“I went over to see him a little while ago.” She worked hard to keep her voice as nonchalant as Mandy’s.
“Oh, thank God.” Mandy flopped back in her seat. “So you know about his injuries. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you, Serena. But Mace swore me to secrecy, and I just—”
She broke off abruptly. She must have caught the look on Serena’s face.
“Mace was injured?” Serena asked on a whisper.
Mandy’s hand flew to her chest. “I’m so sorry, Serena. Crap. Mace is going to kill me. He didn’t want you to know he got hurt.”
“But, I just saw him. Right before I got here. He looked...” Her mind raced back over every detail she picked up when she’d been happily drinking in Mace’s presence. She noticed the harder angles to his face, the lines around his eyes. “He looked healthy. How did I miss an injury?”
Liam gave an impatient cry and smacked the tray of his high chair a few times.
“Sorry, little man.” She turned her attention back to his food bowl, making silly faces as she scooped up cereal and flew it into his mouth.
“He was in range when an IED went off.”
Serena froze and a shudder ran through her body. She was a nurse at the veterans’ hospital. She’d seen her fair share of men with injuries from bombs. The ones that survived could have anything from a deep laceration from flying shrapnel to a lost limb.
She pulled in a deep breath and fed the baby another scoop. “What kind of injuries did he sustain?”
“Shrapnel. He got hit with a blast that tossed him and left deep cuts across his back and down his left leg. But his right leg, I guess it was cut almost all the way through in spots. For a while they thought he’d lose it. He’s one of the lucky ones. Though I'm not sure he sees it that way.”
Serena’s stomach churned, and she suddenly could see him as clear as day, standing behind the couch in Miss Abigail’s living room. He’d hid his legs from her, not taking so much as a step. But he had gripped the back of the couch in his fists. She’d thought he was hiding his emotions from her. But now she wondered if he was doing it as much to hold himself up.
“He’s still recovering?” she asked.
“Yeah. He stopped his physical therapy when he wasn’t improving as quickly as he wanted to. Said he rather he’d lost his leg because at least than he’d still be eligible for deployment.”
“That sounds like Mace.” Serena shook her head and scraped the last bit of baby oatmeal from the bottom of the bowl. “Last bite, handsome, make the most of it.”
As Serena finished giving Liam his lunch, Mandy jumped up to grab a cloth from a drawer by the sink. She ran it under the water and came back to clean his face.
“How is it you always manage to get this in your ears?” Mandy leaned in and kissed her son’s now clean cheek as she continued to chatter to him in a soft, silly voice.
Serena appreciated having a few minutes to wrap her head around what she’d learned. By the time Mandy had Liam cleaned up and in her arms, Serena had thought of forty million questions she needed the answers to.
“How long ago did this happen?”
Mandy squinted her eyes, looking upward as she bounced Liam in her arms. “About nine months ago?”
Made sense. That was the last time she’d heard from Mace before today. “Is he on a medical leave? Until he’s walking better?”
Mandy grimaced.
“No,” she said softly. “He’s out.”
“What?” Serena felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “Out of the Army?”
Mandy nodded.
“No!” She couldn’t even imagine Mace as anything but a soldier. So many things suddenly made sense to her. She’d thought earlier that he wasn’t her Mace. And she hadn’t been wrong. Her Mace always wanted to be a soldier. If he wasn’t that anymore, he must feel totally lost.
She started at Mandy, shaking her head.
“I can’t even imagine how he feels. Being a soldier is all he ever wanted to do.”
“I know. He’s trying to act like he’s handling everything so well, but how could he possibly be? And none of us can break through.”
“Not even Matt?” Serena couldn’t hide her shock. Matt was Mace’s twin brother and the two were close.
“Matt’s tried, but according to him, the most Mace will say is that it sucks that it happened. He won’t talk about how upset he is or how he feels or about what he’s going to do next.”
Serena’s stomach churned and she fought back nausea. “I guess that explains why he didn’t want me around. If he didn’t want to talk to Matt about it, he won’t want to talk to me. And he knows me too well. He knows I wouldn’t let it go.”
“He didn’t want you around?” Mandy asked softly, compassion tingeing her voice.
“Nope. I think I was there for under five minutes before he had me back out on the sidewalk. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was up with him.” She offered Mandy a rueful smile. “That’s why I came here. I thought you could help me figure it out. I assumed he met someone else or something. It never occurred to me it was this bad.”
Mandy sighed as she popped Liam into a bouncy seat on the floor of the family room attached to the kitchen. “Honestly, we all were hoping you’d be able to get through to him. You two have always had a special relationship.”
A warm, hopeful glow filled Serena's chest. She had her proof that she hadn’t made up her relationship with Mace. She might not have seen him in p
erson for the last eight years, but obviously his family knew what they meant to each other. The fact he was freezing her out right now couldn’t change that.
A new determination consumed her. There was no way in hell she’d let Mace face life outside the Army alone. She’d waited eight long years to have him back in her life. She wouldn’t let his injury or bad attitude get in the way of them creating a life together.
“I have to get going,” she said. “And don’t worry. Now that I know the problem, it’ll be that much easier to find a solution. I’m not giving up on Mace.”
Mandy smiled as she walked Serena to the door. “Good. Maybe between you and the rest of the family, we’ll get him back to his old self.”
Serena swallowed hard at being lumped in with the family, but she didn’t know if she agreed with Mandy. If he couldn’t be a soldier, Mace might never be one hundred percent his old self again.
But no matter what, she would do her best to see him through it. As far as she was concerned, she made her vows to him long ago in her heart—for better and for worse, in sickness and in health. He didn’t get to push her way at the first sign of worse.
Chapter 3
That night at work, Serena’s determination wavered. She had the overnight shift from seven in the evening until seven in the morning. Once visiting hours were over, her patients tended to settle in to rest. The slow moments in the quiet of the middle of the night gave her way too much time to think.
Maybe she should let Mace deal with this on his own. The thought made her heart clench, but she had to think about what was best for him. He had a lot to deal with, and while she didn’t doubt that their feelings for each other were way more than a teenage crush, he had a point when he said they didn’t know each other that well.
Parts of him she felt she knew inside and out. But after his deployment, she tended to send him sunny, upbeat letters. She filled them with funny stories about things that happened at the hospital and the people she met as she got reacquainted with Kismet Beach.
Her dad had retired from the Army her last year of college. She’d spent many years living on Army bases with soldiers and other military personnel and families. She knew the drill. She didn’t fill her letters to Mace with details of her first year as a nurse at the veterans’ hospital. He didn’t need to know about the old veteran with no friends or family who became one of her favorite patients before he died. Or about the young soldiers with missing limbs or traumatic brain injuries who would never be the same kids they’d been before they joined the Army.
Mace was right. She’d changed. There were parts of herself she never shared with him. Things that changed who she was. And she was sure the same was true for him. Even before his injuries, his letters and emails were full of stories about the guys in his unit, stupid stunts they’d pulled or funny things they’d said. He’d told her about the stray dog that had attached itself to his unit like some sort of mascot. He left out the details about the grimmer realities he must have been experiencing every day.
Was there some truth in his words when he kicked her out of Miss Abigail’s house? Were they too different now to make things work?
“There’s my favorite nurse.”
Serena looked up from the chart she’d been staring at mindlessly for the last few minutes to find a handsome young man in fatigues on the opposite side of the desk. She took in his close-cropped brown hair, hazel eyes, and his clean-shaven jaw as she tried to place him. And then something clicked in her mind.
“Oh my God! Ryan!” She dropped the chart and scurried around the desk to throw her arms around him. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
And she hadn’t. The last time she saw him, he’d been released to continue his physical therapy as an outpatient. He’d had lines of fatigue and stress etched permanently into the grooves around his mouth. He’d done well with his physical therapy, but his spirits were low and she was afraid his mental health would impact his physical healing.
But now, here he stood, the picture of health. If she didn’t know it, she wouldn’t realize the black booted foot and the leg it was attached to was a prosthetic.
“You look fantastic,” she said and couldn’t keep herself from giving him another quick hug. “Tell me everything. How are you? Obviously all your hard work in physical therapy paid off.”
He grinned. “Hard work and some tough love.”
“Tough love?”
“Yup. I went home to my parents’ house from here. I thought my mother would coddle me until I was ready to crawl out of my skin. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. That woman would have had my drill sergeant quaking in fear.”
“Seriously?” It was hard to imagine the strong, tough-looking soldier in front of her cowering from his mother. And Serena remembered his mom. She came up to about his shoulder and looked like a stiff wind could send her ass over elbows.
“Seriously. That woman could put the fear of God into the most diehard atheist.” He chuckled. “But I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her. She reminded me of all the things I had to live for. And every day she made sure I got out of bed, did my physical therapy and even got me going to a therapist to get my head on straight.”
Serena bit her lip and fought back tears. “I’m so happy for you, Ryan. I’ve been worried about you since you left.”
He grinned at her, giving his face a boyish look. Who would have thought he could ever look like that again after all he’d been through?
“Well, no worries. I’m good as new.”
“And back to active duty?” She gestured to his fatigues.
“And back to active duty,” he confirmed.
Hope filled her chest, and in that instant her mind was made up. She wasn’t waiting on Mace and hoping he eventually found himself again. She’d follow Ryan’s mom’s example and make sure Mace had no choice but to get better.
She couldn’t fight a huge smile. Ryan’s words gave her all the encouragement she needed to get Mace back to his old self. Starting off by reminding him of the feelings they had for each other.
Chapter 4
Serena huffed out a breath when she found herself standing at Miss Abigail’s door the next afternoon. At least this time she wasn’t sweaty and gross after running all the way here. Today she took special care with her appearance, applying light makeup and wearing a cute sundress. She’d driven here instead of walking, and she’d kept the air conditioning blasting the entire way.
Looking her best was step one of Operation Mend Mason. She hadn’t gone so far as come up with a step two, but after getting some sleep, she felt refreshed and ready to tackle things head on.
She rang the doorbell and waited for Miss Abigail to open it. Instead, after several long moments passed, Mace threw it open. When he laid eyes on her, his lips twisted into a grimace.
Great. He obviously couldn’t care less how much time she put into her appearance. She inhaled deeply and pasted on a bright smile.
“Hi, Mace.” She pushed right past him and let herself into the cottage. She turned when she hit the living room doorway to find him still standing at the door, holding it wide open. “You can close that. I’m not going anywhere right this second.”
“My grandmother isn’t here, Serena.” His expression told the whole story of how he felt about her presence here.
She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. And if that gesture served to push her cleavage up a bit higher, well, she was sure it was purely by accident.
When his eyes dipped down quickly and then back up, she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. Maybe this wouldn’t be as tough as she thought.
“We both know I’m not here to see Miss Abigail. Stop being such a wuss, Mason Palmer, and come into the living room so we can talk. You owe me that much.”
She fought hard not to allow her gaze to examine every inch of him. Part of her wanted to find every scar, every inch of him that had been injured. As if just her knowing where his injuries
were would help make them better.
But according to Mandy, his right leg took the brunt of the shrapnel and today he wore pants.
Okay. So maybe her own eyes dipped down a little bit, but it had nothing to do with his injuries and everything to do with the way he filled out that pair of jeans.
She moved her eyes back up to his, to find him staring at her, eyes narrowed and intense. He hadn’t moved an inch from the door.
Was he that anxious to have her leave? As soon as she had the thought, another occurred to her. Mandy told her he hadn’t completely healed and had trouble walking.
He didn’t want her to see him limp.
Holding tight to her emotions so he didn’t see her compassion and mistake it for pity, she turned on her heel and marched into the living room. She walked straight to the picture window that took up most of the front wall. She waited until she heard him come into the room before she turned back to face him.
He stood in front of one of Miss Abigail’s oversized chairs. She swallowed hard. He held himself stiffly, his feet slightly apart, but damn, did he look good. She flicked her eyes over his face hoping to find some small hint of the emotions she experienced when she looked at him.
He remained impassive for several beats until her wish was granted and emotion broke through. Only it wasn’t the emotion she hoped for. Instead his eyebrows rose and he pinned an impatient glare on her.
“You’re the one who asked for this meeting. Want to tell me what you wanted to talk about?” he asked.
She put her hands on her hips. “I want to talk about us.”
He ran his hand over his short hair. “We went over this yesterday, Serena. There is no us. Maybe there never was.”
“Of course there was an us. Don’t be obtuse.”
A disgruntled huff escaped him. “You’re the one who refuses to listen to what I'm saying, but I'm the obtuse wuss.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Yes. Because none of what you’re saying makes sense.”
“Really? It makes no sense to you that I don’t feel like being stuck in a relationship with some girl I had a thing for when I was sixteen years old? I think the statute of limitations has run out on any commitments I made as a teenager.”
